Constructing China: Kafka's Orientalist Discourse

Erscheinungsjahr 1997
ISBN: 978-1-57113-144-7
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 1, 144 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 386 g

Reihe: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture

Kafka's interest in and use of China establish him as a principal commentator in Western discourse on the Orient.

Goebel studies four representative works by Kafka that explore the problems of the Western representation of the Orient: his 'Description of a Struggle'; several letters to Felice Bauer, offering an interpretation of Chinese poetry in connection with the conflict between writing and Kafka's love for Felice; the canonical story 'The Great Wall of China', parodically appropriating sterotypes of China's stagnant history and authoritarian emperors for a refutation of colonialist ideas of progress; and the sequel 'An Old Manuscript', dramatising China's invasion by foreign powers and the breakdown of crosscultural communication. Elucidating these themes from a broadly comparative perspective, Goebel shows Kafka to be one of German modernism's most intriguing and self-reflective writers on the Orient.
ROLF J. GOEBEL is Professor of German at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goebel, Rolf J

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Europäische Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Goebel, Rolf J
ROLF J. GOEBEL is Distinguished Professor of German, Emeritus, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.